At least, I think it’s a reader, if not, I don’t know how he’d have found me. Even if he’s not, it’s a sort of universal question.

He said that he’d been in contact lately with a slave, and now he was interested in being more involved in the community. I am paraphrasing, since I don’t have permission to quote him, but that’s the gist of it.

First, I think that it’s a good and genuinely important thing to have some contact with the community. I know that the life I live is not for everyone, or even for many, but you can have some involvement without being totally immersed.

I want to say, too, that I think that online communities do count, even if they’re different than face-to-face.

I think that communities do a couple of things for us.

I think it matters enormously to have people with whom you can be yourself. People around whom you can, as aisha mentioned in one of her posts, sit at her Sir’s feet and no one thought anything of it.

There is something intrinsically and incredibly valuable about people who see you for what you are, and take you to their heart knowing it.

Another thing that I think is hard to overvalue is the role that communities play in grounding us.

If you live as a slave, with that part of you hidden, when something feels wrong, there’s no one with whom you can gauge your situation.

If you go to your sister and try to explain that your husband beats you, and he controls your money, and your choices, he tells you what you can and can’t do, but none of THAT is the problem, you’re worried that his interest in a new slave means he’s not going to want YOU anymore…

Well, I would guess that once you get out that part about beating you, your sister is going to be calling in the troops to get you out of this awful situation. She’s not going to hear that no, no, no, THAT you like, it’s this other thing…

If, on the other hand, you were to tell me that, I would ask you why you felt that, if he’d given you reason to be concerned, and maybe make some suggestions on how to deal with that topic.

It’s also important in a community wherein members can pride themselves on being controlling assholes that you can tell the good kind of asshole from the bad kind, and that’s where community comes in.

So, that’s why I think community is important.

How do you find it?

Finding it online is often the easiest place to start.

There is much I despise about Fetlife. Much.

The search function is ridiculous, unworkable and useless, and I see much that makes me believe it will, in time, become the same useless sort of cesspool that bondage.com and alt.com and collarme.com have all become, but for the moment, it’s what we have.

If you don’t have an account, you should. It’s free, and easy, and has rendered much of what we used in the past, including those sites I just mentioned, outdated.

Create your account and give a little information about yourself, because people will look.

For the love of all that’s holy, please don’t whine about how you hate to write about yourself, tell us how unfathomably complicated you are, or how totally bad ass you are.

Do not claim to have been a Master or a slave for 15 years when your age is under 40.

Do not put up a picture of your cock or your pussy as your profile picture.

Trust me. We will just laugh at you if you do these things.

Then you should put your city name in the search box and that will give you a very good idea of what I mean by useless. However, it’s what we have.

Then look at groups. Look at groups in your area, and read about some of them. Join a few that seem active and of general interest.

Observe at first. It’s fine to introduce yourself, but it’s usually better to see what the lay of the land is before claiming your own little half acre of it.

Notice the events that are near you, too. See who is organizing them. See who’s going.

Then send a a note, a brief and polite one, asking if they mind if you send them a friend request.

Once you’ve acquired a few friends, you’ll get an idea for what’s going on around your area.

When you’ve done that, then the next step is to actually go out.

Munches are usually a good place to start. They might be called Meet and Greets, or Sloshes, too.

If you worry that you won’t know anyone, you might be surprised. You’ll likely recognize some of the people from your area. Make sure you introduce yourself to a couple of them.

Pay attention to how people behave, because every group is different. Watch how people behave. Emulate their behavior. Chat with people. Everyone was new once, and most of us remember that.

And then keep coming back. You’ll begin to recognize people, and more importantly, they’ll begin to recognize you.

It won’t happen over night, and you may discover it’s not really your thing.

Even if you do, it’s nice to keep a hand in, to at least be someone that is known, and known of.

If you decide then that it’s really not for you, it will be an informed choice.

And really, seriously, honestly, Fetlife, could you NOT make a search function that actually works?

When I want to find someone by name, don’t you think it might be most helpful if first you showed me results in my friends list, then results that are geographically close to me, then results with whom I share group memberships, and THEN start on the people in Queensland?

And would it REALLY be that hard to let me search through my friends by letters of the alphabet, not by page numbers, many of which I can’t bypass without putting a number in the url?

Couldn’t I just pick everyone whose user name starts with P?

It would be nice, too, to be able to personalize your feed in the way that Facebook allows because, you know, I may not mind you in my friend list, but if you’re going to “love” every single dirty picture, and post dozens of “great pic,” “LOL,” and “me too” posts, can’t I just opt out of their feed?

Nah, I just got caught up with the holiday and the dining room renovation, and all that kind of distractions.

So, anyway, the first munch I ever went to was in Lexington, Kentucky. It would have been the summer, probably June or July, of 1997.

I don’t know that it was called a munch, I honestly don’t remember.

I had ended my previous relationship and now had the ability to do what I wanted and I wanted to find a community of some kind.

The munch was held at a horrible Ryan’s Steak House, and a couple named Denise and Jeff were running it at the time.

There weren’t a lot of people there, maybe 20 or so. I guess I knew a couple of people already from online. I don’t remember being nervous about going in, but surely I was, at least a little.

I actually went to Lexington munches regularly for a number of years, probably for six or eight years I hardly missed any munches there.

I saw the munch there through multiple hosts, some good, some not so bad, one downright damaging.

I moved to Indianapolis in January of 1998 for a job. I’d started the munches in Louisville just a few months before, but Indy wasn’t that far, two hours away, I came down for every munch for the year I lived out of town.

I also took over the Indianapolis munch for the year I was there. The people who’d run it before were about to shut it down, and I wrote and asked them to give it to me instead, which they did.

I went back to the Indy munch periodically over the years, though it finally ceased to operate about two years ago.

I’ve been to munches in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, and Cincinnati, Ohio, and Bloomington, Indiana.

I may well have been to other munches that I have forgotten over the years.

So maybe this should really be called Munches I Have Known.

I’ve known a lot of munches. Some were more welcoming, some were less. Some lasted, some disappeared after a few months.

And in the end, they all had value because they all gave the community a place to gather, and a group of like-minded people to gather with.

I am thankful that the dining room got put back together so the living room could get put back together so the kitchen could be put back together so we could do a Thanksgiving gathering.

It wasn’t a LOT of people, 14 in all, but any more would have been too tight, particularly when an actual meal was involved for about half of them, albeit in three shifts.

The food was good – I’m a good cook, and I have put on enough big meals that I know how to do it, how to make things come out at about the right time, etc.

My favorite part, though, was after the meal, or at least after the first shift of the meal. I knew it would be. It was the time when we were all gathered in the living room – a decent-sized room – and that’s always my favorite part.

The work is done by then. The food was cooked and served and much of it sitting on the new buffet for people to help themselves.

I had made pumpkin pie – of which I have yet to have a piece, though I think of the two I had made, about a half of one is left – and others brought sweets, too.

I spent a good deal of years working in healthcare accounting. I understand cost reports and step-down allocations, volume and intensity based budgeting and reporting, and a lot of other boring things.

I used to think, on cold mornings especially, I wish I didn’t have to go to work, blech, I don’t want to go to work…

My drive to work took me by the Wayside Christian Mission.

Standing outside the doors as I drove off to my job was a line of people, waiting for the Mission to open, waiting to come in out of the cold, waiting for a hot meal, waiting for such small things that I took for granted.

It always made me ashamed that I had complained.

As crazy as my mother was, and as poor as we were, she gave me a clear understanding of how lucky I WAS.

I never went hungry; my mother did.

I knew that however poor we were, I was still luckier than most of the planet.

I feel pretty thankful, honestly, most of the time. Things can always be better, but things can always be worse, too.

I am thankful for the health of my family and my friends and myself.

I’m thankful for the people who have served me, over time. I know I am not the easiest person. I am demanding and critical and I have an opinion on everything.

I have been lucky to be served, and loved, by extraordinary men, and I am grateful.

I have extraordinary slaves now, and my life would be far emptier, far duller, and far more boring without them.

I am lucky to have people around me who care about me, who indulge me, who scamper to get me things and look properly alarmed if I look stern. I feel lucky to have people who know me and still feel that way.

I am thankful that I feel as though I have made a difference, that I have done good work. I’ve never been lazy, and I have genuinely always held the community’s best interests at heart. I’ve done well by that community, I think.

I’m glad to have the first world problems of a house to clean and things to find places for and the mess of a minor renovation from which to recover. Those are good problems and remind me, as driving by the Mission used to, that I should think far more about the good than the bad, and to remind myself of the grace their is in gratitude.

So, I had a busy and productive day and the dining room is making strides, just some last where-does-this-go-now things left, really, and I had time to dust some areas.

The living room no longer has chairs stacked in it.

I tidied up my cupboards and pulled out the things I would need for the next few days easily accessible.

I did a couple more of those emails that had been hanging fire – does anyone else use that term other than me? – and got through a lot of those that aren’t pressing but just build up so quickly – blog entries and all the sale reminders and recipes and message notifications – at least in my mailbox.

I seeded two pomegranates, which does not sound like a lot unless you have seeded pomegranates.

I polished a silver ice bucket that I had bought at a yard sale, which hadn’t been polished in probably a decade. slave drew had to help on that one, my already overtaxed polishing arms and hands gave out.

I made a list of what’s being served – I have plans for tomorrow, but I often cook a sort of Chosen Family Thanksgiving on the Friday AFTER and I’m doing that again this year. That makes me feel more settled, too.

Also, as anyone who sometimes puts on a rather large and/or complicated meals knows, a list ensures that you do not, after everyone is tucking into pie, or worse, gone home, find the side dish of oyster stuffing or the deviled eggs still sitting in the very back of the fridge.

So, I will be busy some tomorrow, but I’ll have a bit more time and, one hopes, energy, since as of now I’m drooping.

I hope all of you have a lovely day tomorrow, stuffing yourself if you celebrate Thanksgiving, or, for that matter, even if you only celebrate Thursday.